It had to be a person who took it. That meant I had lost two cameras in three months.

Then today M. comes in from a walk and says, "I had to detour to avoid your scout camera."

"What scout camera?" I asked.

"The one between our house and R.'s house."

"Does it have a camouflage pattern on it?" I asked.

She said that it did. I began to feel the sands of my self-hood shifting under my feet.

I walked up that way. I could not find it. There was a camo-painted bird house up that way. Had she glanced at it and thought that its round entrance hole was a lens? (The birds, however, have ignored it. As usual.)

She came back from walking Shelby the collie. "Are you sure you saw a camera?" I asked.

"Follow me."

We walked out the back door, up the hill, through the brush (not to the bird house), and there it was. The missing camera. The one that I had gone back twice looking for any trace of, even once bringing her along to help.

It was not over there on the national forest, it was here, on R.'s property technically, but he would not care.

I had completely forgotten it. Instead, I had constructed a whole mental narrative of placing this particular camera at the trail crossing where I had photographed the bears. Then I went back and found it "gone." Because it was never there.

Maybe I need a rocking chair and a nice nurse to bring me a cup of soup.

The camera, meanwhile, had been in place for seven months, but its rechargeable batteries had died after three weeks. It had 29 images, nothing special.

7 comments:

Great post. I got quite a chuckle out of this one. Anyone of us could have done the same thing. Funny how when we grow old we reach for excuses like senility as opposed to being just plain forgetful. Your blog is always worth a stop and read. Thanks again.

Sounds like the "Phil Crazy Bull effect". He was a yuwipi man in Alburquerque and sometimes days after a ceremony the oddest things or coincidences would happen to some of us, no rational explanation forthcoming. See last comment: